The present disclosure generally relates to computer programming. More specifically, the disclosure relates to an improved client interface for accessing complex data structures.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
As one example of a complex data structure, business management software solutions frequently make use of data structures commonly referred to as business objects (BOs), which may be hierarchically structured. Such objects generally correspond to a thing in the real world, and store information relating to that “thing”. For example, a business object may be created for a sales order. A sales order business object might contain information about the seller and the customer on a sales order, the product items being purchased, scheduling information regarding shipment, and so forth.
Frequently, this information is organized in a hierarchical fashion. For example, a root sales order node may be created that has information about the seller and the buyer, among other things. The root node may also have one or more product-item sub nodes, each of those nodes containing information about a particular product-item ordered by the customer. Each of the product-item nodes may in turn have a set of line-item sub nodes, each of the line-item sub nodes containing information about a particular shipment, for example. (The nodes are also referred to herein as “sub-elements”.) The structure of the hierarchy may be described in association which are stored in the business objects.
It would be advantageous to provide improved systems, techniques and mechanisms for improved client interfaces for accessing complex data structures.